My life, my interests, my research
I am excited as a computer scientist can be … I think. Today I completed a draft version of the STAMPS query tester. This little application will be of a tremendous use to compare different kinds of retrieval techniques on the STAMPS dataset.
What I like of this interface is that it keep things essential, as I like them. However it still show lots of complexity in the output. I realized this using PythonCard a wxPython wrapper.
Tags: graphical user interface, information retrieval, Python
Prompted by a comment on this previous post, I was looking for some bibliographies on MobileLearning, which I found here: [1], [2], [3], and [4]. However, this collections are not organized at all. One of the best reviewed collection of articles is the one by Future Lab.
Additionally, for the current (future?) trends, here is the summary of the WMTE conference by the ‘never sleeping’ Nicolas.
Tags: mobile learning
Transana is software for professional researchers who want to analyze digital video or audio data. Transana lets you analyze and manage your data in very sophisticated ways. Transcribe it, identify analytically interesting clips, assign keywords to clips, arrange and rearrange clips, create complex collections of interrelated clips, explore relationships between applied keywords, and share your analysis with colleagues. The result is a new way to focus on your data, and a new way to manage large collections of video and audio files and clips.
A mac version is in development.
Tags: Exploratory Data Analysis, natural language processing, statistics, text data mining
PythonCard is a GUI construction kit for building cross-platform desktop applications on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, using the Python language. The PythonCard motto is “Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.”
PythonCard is for you if you want to develop graphical applications quickly and easily with a minimum of effort and coding. Apple’s HyperCard was one of their inspirations; simple, yet powerful. PythonCard uses wxPython.
Google News Map is a python google hack that parse Google News, and draws a map with the latest headlines of the coordinates of the countries.
Tags: google, hack, information visualization, map algorithms, maps
World66 is an open content travel guide, where people from all over the planet can write about the places they love, the hotels they stayed in, the restaurants that have eaten. Every part of the travel guide can be edited directly, just click the [edit] button and go ahead. You can change the info you find, do a write up, add a complete city or just a bar or a restaurant.
Tags: collaboration tools, maps, tagging
CmapTools program empowers users to construct, navigate, share and criticize knowledge models represented as concept maps. It allows users to, among many other features, construct their Cmaps in their personal computer, share them on servers (CmapServers) anywhere on the Internet, link their Cmaps to other Cmaps on servers, automatically create web pages of their concept maps on servers, edit their maps synchronously (at the same time) with other users on the Internet, and search the web for information relevant to a concept map.
The CmapTools client is free for use by anybody, whether its use is commercial or non-commercial. In particular, schools and universities are encouraged to download it and install it in as many computers as desired, and students and teachers may make copies of it and install it at home. (Commercial companies that install their own CmapServer do need to get a separate license for a CmapTools client that will talk to the commercial version of the CmapServer).
Tags: flowcharts, information visualization, learning technology, mac, maps, collaboration tools
Monkey business furthers this work with animatronic agents, as seen earlier with the Cellular Squirrel. We plan to create a peer-to-peer network of animatronic monkeys that act as audio-enabled agents, keeping members of a distributed group of people informed about each other’s current state and level of availability. We can also use the animatronic monkeys as media to which we can send “behavior messages” from cell phones; the monkeys, upon receiving these messages, will move and make sounds in such a way to indicate certain emotions or behaviors.
[more]
Tags: information visualization, interaction design, new technology, wierd
Oliver pointed me to his review of collaborative writing tools. Unfortunately I do not read German so well to appreciate his comments. Here I repropose the links in case someone is interested.
Today I met Jani Korhonen and Heikki Tolonen from the MediaTeam in the university of Oulu. We had a nice meeting and they showed me their ubiquitous ‘capture the flag’ game. The design concept is based on a series of rules that the user has to evaluate to decide to which point in space to move before actually moving. This reduces the speed of the interaction, overcoming also some problems related to the refresh speed and the positioning accuracy.
Heikki promised to send me some screenshoots in the next days.
Capture the Flag game is played in teams. The idea is to capture and defend virtual flag zones. Game is played with a mobile handheld device, in which player’s position and the flag zones are shown on the screen. Cooperation within a team is emphasized: players are forced to play as a team. Capturing flags is much faster, when it´s done as a team, but also flags situated nearby have effects. Players must also pay attention to the flags positions in their strategy and their affect to the game itself.
The game was tested on 12 – 16 May 2005 at the University of Oulu with some about thirty students.
Tags: ubiquitous game, urban exploration
Habbo Hotel is a virtual hotel where you can hang out and make new friends. It’s designed for 13 to 18 year olds in the US. There are also lots of other location all around the world.
When you register you ‘become’ a Habbo and then you can walk, dance, eat, drink and chat in the cafes, restaurants, swimming pools and games rooms. The real fun begins when you decorate and furnish your own room. Then you can host your own party.
Creating a room is free, while you have to pay to furnishing the room.
Teemu pointed me to their map annotation tool, which I find extremely well designed and simple to use. The annotation is done ‘a-la-flickr’, selecting a squared part of the image and attaching a text to that. Check this out!
ImaNote – (Image and Map Annotation Notebook) is a web-based multi-user tool that allows you, and your friends, to display a high-resolution image or a collection of images online and add annotations and links in to them. You simply mark an area on an image (e.g. a map) and write an annotation related to the point. You can also add a link to the annotation.
You can use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to keep track of the annotations added to the image or make links on your own blog/web site/email that are pointing to the annotations on the image. The links leads right to the points in the image. ImaNote is Open Source and Free Software released under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL).
Tags: information visualization, Location Based Services, map algorithms, maps, psychogeography, urban exploration
Writeboard is a web based tool that allows a group of user to write collaboratively a text. It basically combines the functionalities of a text editor with a versioning system such that is possible to see who modified what and when. Each author is marked with a different color. It is in principle like SubEthaEdit but just works online and cross-platform.
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DATE: November, 22, 2005
Short Talks
JERRY ANDRIESSEN
Computer Support for Problem Solving in Small Groups
How can we support face to face problem solving before the computer supported collaborative problem solving.
Digalo – “map” argumentation tool [7]
They commpared two experimental group. The first with a shared workspace and the second with a workspace split in four quadrant.
Instead of looking at individual contribution, they started looking at sequence of contribution, called “interaction sequence”.
Results showed different contribution to different discussion at the same time. Parallel threads and jumping between the threads.
LEAD project: integrates research and practice within the field of CSCW and CSCL, mainly learner-learner interaction and learner-tool interaction and the evolving situation.
> http://isis.dia.unisa.it/progetti/lead
Q: What happens when you have a specific problem-solving structure. What happen when you integrate these frameworks into a regular classroom?
A: I solution oriented debates this is not really applicable.
SANNA JARVELA
Computer support for motivation and self-regulation?
Collaborative learning as co-ordinated action for sharing perspectives.
Cognitive, social and emotional aspects are tightly intertwined.
Self-regulated learning -> teoretical umbrella that defines the good skills of a good learner. Concern how learners develop learning skills and use these skills effectively.
Motivation regulation -> regulation of motivation concerns attemprs to regulate various motivational tools.
New project: SCAMO -> Studying and Scaffolding Motivational Self-Regulated Learning.
How can motivation regulation be supported?
What is a learning Kit? (Winne, 2005)
It is a software package that promotes interactive learning of multimedia information. Kits include text, diagrams, photos, charts, tables, audio and video clips –any information format found in libraries and on the internet.
What else could be used for regulation tools?
WORKING SESSION:
JOINT BRAINSTORMING
Extending collective sition of current CSCL
- A step further, what is the direction?
- What do we want to be able to do in the future
- Ultimate CSCL solution
Patrick:
- automatic group formation
- automatic document sharing within the short range group
-> a technology that can support that is bluetooth
Piritta:
- Notes/questions automatic sharing during meeting and conferences
- Temu: we should have also an automatic filtering of the notes
Patrick:
- simple setups for collaborative software
- Networking, sharing, installation
Mauro: People want to regulate how to achieve their own goals
Informal goals are constantly renegotiated
Patrick: one of the scenario we worked on was targeting the split of the interaction over a simulation between different mobile phones (WiSIM).
Teemu: Location based wiki, e.g. in a library
short annotations, divide annotations, identity of person who annotates
Jerry: It will be extremely useful to have the “history of usage of things”, so that you can reconstruct how the object was used.
Mauro: IP numbers for objects / Internet of objects
Have a look: http://www.thinglinks.com/docs/create
Patrick: There is always a privacy issue on accessing this kind of information. We can overcome this with a given consent.
Patrick: there are lots of people that does not want to share.
Mauro: construct/develop/understand affordances by viewing the history of usage
GROUP DISCUSSION
Paul:
Better match with people. Paul’s group worked on this idea of finding the best group composition, so to have, for instance, the biggest diversity of opinion that can help to brainstorm.
What kind of ambient technologies can we use to support group work?
Jocelin:
- Avatars to represents people emotions.
- Location awareness can support sharing memories at particular locations.
- Using concepts maps.
- Tool: CmapTools (http://cmap.ihmc.us/)
- small notes can constitute nodes into a grid (grid computing)
Patrick:
- CSCL is too explicit, so some of the idea, is to support group formation/work with a “virtual group backpack” that is automatically assembled when in physical proximity. Virtual fingerprints. The physical and the virtual world can merge more and more.
Sanna:
- Community forming
– Working session: Imagineering
OK, Let’s think activities
- informal behaviour, which can be monitored, registered, but not supervised
- it allows to create new viewpoints
functionality:
- virtual life of objects
- chat rooms: created and negotiated functional space
- overcome and reinvent spatial/geographical constraints at the same time
- What is the virtual counterpart of the table? The table has memory
Jari: in finland 5th grade share the same classrooms. It would be useful to have the history of usage of the table.
Sarah: you can find yourself with massive amount of information and the problem would be to filter.
A good way to represent it is to have a new layer on top of the existing objects. This layer would contains information that are not easy to find somewhere else.
Affordance filters would select the relevant information for specific usage, scenario….
Use information of which books have been read by children
Understanding how an instrument works (local wikipedia attached to objects)
Jari: if we use some mobile device or the objects itself should be able to record its use case.
activities:
create new life and identities
automatically trigger manuals and histories of usage
Powerpoint slides:
Imagineering
Objects are annotated, preferably automatically, leaving traces or fingerprints, to be worked on collaboratively by ’a’ group
Informative annotations (who used it, how to use it, in what scenario it was used)
Collaborative information: information of what other groups did, filtered in terms of scenarios
(2) Field trip
Data points (tagged locations) where such information can be accessed or updated
Allows you to compare your information to what other people have done in the past
Imagineering (3)
Generic objects that generate information specific to the task/scenario
Pointers to other viewpoints, users, scenarios, objects
Objects are books, or topics within a book, annotated by users, triggered by physical proximity
MODEL DEMONSTRATION
Teemu: Aura
[8]
They choose to focus on two parameters: location and history/reputation.
An invisible breath, emanation, or radiation. A distinctive but intangible quality that seems to surrounda persons or things.
Charoula: Digital backpack
The object of the tool is to find the best expert on the fly, to give some transactive memory help, to offer some social network analysis, augmenting casual and spontaneous collaboration, allow people to choose a partner.
One of the possibility was to access the resources, keeping track of effective collaboration, and group profiles.
Jerry: Fingerprints
Objects are annotated. See above.
Paul: what intrigues me is the path that led the person to the object and from object to object and so forth. Some trials might be successful, while others might reveal to be unsuccessfull. This was suggesting the idea of haveing some markers that reveal the performances of a certain trail.
> Next task is to identify the requirements of the idea and then rate them.
REQUIREMENTS
> Fingerprints
Basic reuirements might include an RFID Tag for each book or object that needs to be related to virtual information.
Requirements for the book annotation scenario
(2)Stick a rfid tag to each book
(2)Bluetooth devices we carry
(2)Reader embedded in the table, table detects your identity, embedded display
(2)Annotate, mark passages with intelligent pen, microscanner
(1) Software that handles the matching and sharing of nodes (back end handling of visualization, filtering, matching, link to identity card, reaggregation of same information, e.g. Abstraction layers)
- Opensource
> Digital Backpack
There are a couple of society level requirements, mainly about identity and disclosure. The technical requirements includes an automatic updating, an adaptive teachable level and it should run on mass consumer devices.
The design should include transparency and the availability of the software.
> Aura
Technical requirements might include glasses that enhance the phisical experience of the person with some augmented reality. Also we can use the mobile phones with their camera. Finally all the filtering and maintenence of the system can be handled on the computer side.
Piia: Actually the aura might serve also the purposes for the user to understand how others might see his/her aura.
Teemu: Your virtual aura might actually become suddenly a fashion matter.
SANNA – CONCLUSIONS
It is quite clear that we are fed with the current vision of CSCL. Surprisengly we thought about ourself as collaborator rather than thinking about abstract studnets.
We did not really discuss about personal abilities. Rather we focused more at the group level and on research perspective.
The idea is to collect all the data that you have collected. What can it be the possible follow up? Publications?
I will encourage everybody to “steal” these ideas and bring them further.
Paul: Maybe three of us can write a summary paper with the main findings of this workshop and to trnaslate some of the ideas on paper.
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REFERENCES: {as documents / sites are referenced add them below}
[1] http://www.leninsgodson.com/
[2] http://www.rotuaari.net/
[3] http://ludocraft.oulu.fi/
[4] http://mlab.uiah.fi/
[5] http://edtech.oulu.fi/
[6] http://europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,,58683,00.html
[7] http://www.dunes.gr/ORD2004.pdf
[8] Teemu uses CmapTools for the presentation
…
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NOTES ON / KEY TO THIS TEMPLATE:
A headline (like a field in a database) will be CAPITALISED
This differentiates from the text that follows
A variable that you can change will be surrounded by _underscores_
Spaces in variables are also replaced with under_scores
This allows people to select the whole variable with a simple double-click
A tool-tip is lower case and surrounded by {curly brackets / parentheses}
These supply helpful contextual information.
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Side commets and links from Teemu – things we have discussed about:
1) Writeboard – collaborative writing software online
http://www.writeboard.com/
2) ImaNote – Image and Map Annotation Tool
http://imanote.uiah.fi
3) Douwe Osinga’s blog
http://douweosinga.com/blog
4) Designing Interactive Systems conference
http://www.sigchi.org/dis2006/
Tags: learning technology, Location Based Services, mobile learning, new technology, pedagogy, politics
TITLE OF PAPER: Multiple Technologies and Tools for Supporting CSCL
PRESENTED BY: Sanna Jarvela
DATE: November, 21, 2005
LOCATION: Oulu, FI
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REAL-TIME NOTES / ANNOTATIONS OF THE PAPER:
INTRODUCTION
By Sanna Jarvela
Sharing expertise on our field of research.
PAUL KIRSCHNER
CSCL as it should be: A combinationof educational social and technologiacl affordances
Gibson -> affordances: a possibility for action (a reciprocal relation, perception-action coupling) -> you perceive something and thus you do something.
If we want to design good CSCL environments we should use good affordances.
We use lots of conventions in our interactive environments.
Behavior is context-bound. Example of the elevator.
Education is a combination of pedagogy, context, technology, social.
CHAROULA ANGELI
Learning with computers as cognitive tools: A distributed Cognition Tools (tools that can amplify extend and henhance human cognition.
Cognitive tools are intellectual partners (Distrib. Cogni)
Cognition is streached over individual artifacts and tools.
Model-It
Field-Dependence or Independence -> mixed dependence
Instructional design -> they asked a couple of students to discuss with Model-It the immigration scheme between the states adn mexico.
The results strongly suggest that the effectiveness of instructional materials depends in learners’ FD/FI. Group critical thinking performance was influenced vy the authority of the text and the authority of the author.
Reflections on the Distributed Cognition apprach: what’s the role of the individual thinker in the distributed cognition approach (becoming a critical thinker).
She says that the distributed cognition theory is not enough for explaining individual skills development like critical thinking. So she is trying to extend the framework off DC to incorporate individual aspects.
TIMO OJALA
Two Case Studies in Hybrid Interfaces (Mediateam Oulu)
These services have been inplemented in the Rotuaari project
MobiLenin: Personal mobile phone plus public display [1]
- The display in a pub. The display shows some music video clips. The users can send SMS to a server to change some apsect of the display.
- Using a personal phone you have a personal trusted device, allowing unhibited use
- disperse access and control
Mobile Fair Diary: personal mobile phone plus website
Symbian application for recording notes [2]
On the web site the notes are collected and organised for browsing and sharing.
They gott interesting usage statistics of the project.
360 users with 33000 notes taken during the experiment.
TONY MANNINEN
Serious Fun in Gameworlds: In Search for Collaborative Play -> LudoCRAFT [3]
Information society is turning into game society ??
What is collaboration there? A mixed bounch of solo artists?
Collaboration in MMORPG?
They created a collaborative learning setting called eScape. The idea was to enforce collaboration. AirBuccaneers is another example. Her collaboration i s necessary to complete the game.
Castle of Oulu is another example, where there are uniquely individual roles but which are intertwined into the game.
Computer-Supported cooperative play (CSCP)
What are the common goals? Level and degree of co-ordination? Conflict solving mechanisms?
JERRY ANDRIESSEN
Short comments
- take affordances into account to support collaboration? What are relevant affordances? Affordances of collaboration scenario? Can they be designed? Is regular learning designed? Can trust be designed?
- Partners in cognition: solve tasks that people are not very good at ?? (not clear)
- What argumentation is triggered? Indipendent thinking: depend on the system? Group thinking and independant thinking should be reconcilied?
- Hybrid interfaces are just new scenario’s or old wine in new bottles?
- Communities are important in making activities meaningful !!!
- project based learning
Q&A
1- Patrick to Paul: Isn’t the situation to have a particular target in mind when designing a system. Affordances are tailored by design?
Paul: Of course things are drven by design and audience of course, but that’s not an affordance. Let’s look at how people do things and then we make design on top of it.
2- Jocelin to Gerry: It worries me when you say that collaborative learning is not working?
Gerry: What I meant is that we don’t know why is working. The amount of factual knowledge that each child has at the end is not what it was expected to be (reflecting on the situation in NL).
3- Design has became also a method so nowadays the user is pretty much into the process of design.
4- Affordances are a constant interaction between the artefacts and people using it. An object does not have an affordance.
DEMO SESSION
JANI KORHONEN
Applications for short range wireless technologies
Mobile to mobile communication are supported by filers.
They conducted a field experiment in March 2003 to explore approaches for conducting permission based mobile multimedia advertising.
They were pushing content on the user mobile phone. There were a couple of leakes in the positioning technique. Downloading of the ads takes too long time.
Another idea was to use RFID tags in the CampusTag and the CityTag projects.
LocalInfo is a Nokia bluetooth application that allows the user to receive tome push information on their phone that is related to their position.
Nokia Flier allows the user to compose a multimedia message that can be shared over bluetooth in a totally anonymous way.
Q: Nokia Sensor is quite similar to this idea.
PATRICK JERMANN AND MAURO CHERUBINI
Demo of CRAFT activities and current projects.
SARAH PRICE
Ambient Wood pervasive computing
Opportunities for active ‘hands on’ learning
- experential real world interaction, engagement, exploration, creativity, reflection
In collaboration with Yvonne Rogers
-> digital augmented woodland to support scientific enquiry and discovery of plants interdipendences
- Variety of devices
A digital probe was used to take light/moisture readings Promoted collaborative activity.
The ambient horn was used to receive sound information and it was pervasively triggered by pingers according to child location.
A periscope was used in combination with pingers to making the invisible visible.
Afterwards they could reuse the material collected on site for reflecting and representing the data into a collaborative discussion.
JOCELYN WISHART
PDAs in teacher training
There are a couple fo good examples where the PDA is used to create connections with other people, which means that creates good opportunities for collaborative interactions.
One of the argument is that the size of the PDA makes it less intrusive during the teaching and therefore optimal for supporting the collaborative activities without distracting.
TEEMU LEINONEN
Media Lab UIAH [4]
FLE3 is a tool for knowledge building
MOBILED project: mobile phone in formal and informal learning in developing countries.
Method: Scenarios, Video mock-ups, prototypes
They showed the Mobile Encyclopedia, which enable to access wikipedia via SMS. A vooice syntethizer calls back the user reading the article of the wikipedia that matches the search criteria.
The use of the video mock-ups is just great. We can see on the fly what is going to happen during the activity and the potential for the particular learning activity.
Smart phones in project based learning. The basic ideas is to collect community stories, recording them, and binding them to a mobile number and a code. People retrieving the story can also contribute to the study.
The model of validation of the information is the same as the one from wikipedia.
JARI LARU
Distributed scaffolding [5]
A framwork for distributed scaffolding in mobile mediated contexts
The aim is to design, implement and evaluate scaffolds for situated and technology mediated collaborative learning that augment each other.
A design experiment: Nature trail and mobiles -> to find new methods and technologies for enhancing nature trails.
They used the Nokia Fliers for breaking bluetooth taboos and for supporting mobile explorations.
The nokia flier uses an autoconfiguration of the BT network. Devices are BT nodes of the self-organizing BT-grid. [6]
Each group had to find arguments to support hypotheses offered in the task flier. Creating own fliers was possible using some sentence openers.
PIIA TOLONEN
Constructing and Sharing Knowledge Representation with Mobile Mind Map Tool in Collaborative Learning.
The interest is in the structure of the distribution of the cognition. What kind of mobile knowledge representation student use when using a mobile system?
Pedagogical model: mind map with paper and pen; compus area exploration; campus area exploration; mind map with software tool; experience sharing.
Content analysis: new concept; re-use; reprocess; linking; placing.
Students used different mechanisms to share knowledge representations. How does the mobile tool affected?
WORKING SESSIONS
joint brainstorming – working sessions – role play on-stage – working sessions in groups
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–
REFERENCES: {as documents / sites are referenced add them below}
[1] http://www.leninsgodson.com/
[2] http://www.rotuaari.net/
[3] http://ludocraft.oulu.fi/
[4] http://mlab.uiah.fi/
[5] http://edtech.oulu.fi/
[6] http://europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,,58683,00.html
…
Tags: learning technology, Location Based Services, mobile learning, new technology
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